Not Everything Brainless is Dead (9 page)

Chapter 11: Bank Where We Started

The story of how The Bank got its name was one of adventure and deceit. Before settling on its current and exceedingly successful moniker, much deliberation transpired of possible other names. To settle this deadlock, board members submitted their suggestions so everyone could vote on it. Dozens upon dozens of names found their way into the top hat, most of which were quite terrible. After a lengthy process, they had their winner. Shortly thereafter, they threw the winner out and
The Bank
was chosen. The other suggestions, like making the
B
backwards or stylizing the name like
Banque
or
Baynk
, were collectively deemed lame, not a term the well-dressed businessmen used lightly.

The Bank was just ahead, and somehow the refuge made their dire task seem somehow less dire. In actuality, they doubted the bank where this mysterious outbreak originated would offer much refuge at all. At least it would be an exciting pit stop on their adventure. With any luck, this step would lead to another step, and that step would lead to yet another step. These steps, when combined together as one, would create some kind of crazy contraption that would lead them upwards to their salvation. Then, with this ascension completed, they could watch the denizens of the dead below, and mock them for trying to extinguish the human flame. This, of course, was in the most metaphorical of senses.

As their destination appeared at the end of the block, they realized just who had found refuge there—certainly not the living. Apparently, zombies realized the importance of this place in the creation of their race, which surprised them all, since zombie’s IQ was somewhere between one celled organisms and cardboard. Still, they must have somehow cracked it. Perhaps an unforeseen force directed them to The Bank, and directed they were, considering the sea of corpses between the heroes and their destination.

“Okay, so we need to get into that bank, but it seems it’s already occupied,” Charlie began, “so here’s the plan. I’m going to run up there, startle them, and then we’ll pick them off as they scatter. Keep your distance, don’t get bit, and stay alert. You’ve seen the movies. They always seem to sneak up on you when you least expect it.”

“GOOD SPEECH,” Freight said.

Charlie couldn’t really tell if the man was being sarcastic or not, so he just said, “Thank you.”

Without missing a beat, Charlie sprinted towards group of zombies, ears flailing about and screaming at the top of his lungs. The miniscule zombie reflection within his plastic eyes grew ever larger. Then, systematically, the zombies turned to face him. What they did not do, however, was flee in terror. In fact, the entire presentation only seemed to irritate. Apparently, the zombies discovered, and with much haste, that they had nothing to fear at all from giant blue bunny rabbits, a fact many humans still struggle with to this day. 

The kink in the plan caught everyone off guard, and now a horde of zombies with outstretched arms shuffled in their general direction. Captain Rescue may have disagreed, as noted by the frantic screaming, but the time for panic had not yet come. It would be
at least
a few minutes before any of these cadavers came within gnawing distance. A zombie had many defining qualities: its insatiable thirst for brains, their putrid smell, decaying from a fresh corpse to a rotten corpse in mere moments. Nowhere, in any list, would zombies be defined by their speed. Unless they were of the infected variety, and had not yet died—but then they wouldn’t be zombies in the first place.

Faced with an impenetrable horde, Captain Rescue’s self-perseverance kicked in. He had to find a hiding spot. While everyone else fought for their lives, and for the survival of the human race, Captain Rescue scampered off. Little did they know, just as Dr. Malevolent suspected, the human race had just abandoned this little corner of the world and neglected to send in the armed forces, or any force at all. Now, humanity sat underneath a tent watching the heroes with popcorn at the ready. They paid special attention to Captain Rescue, who had just found the perfect disguise to conceal himself—an empty trashcan. As he pulled the lid over his head, he immediately felt much safer, not to mention the sudden craving for cookies. He sat there for a few moments in utter darkness with his eyes shut, picturing chocolate chip cookies in his head. As his mind’s eye wolfed the treats down, the sound of gunfire and exploding zombies begged him to peek outside his comfortable trashcan.

Hesitantly, he lifted the lid; just as expected, the world had come alive with zombie carnage. Delight filled the hero’s eyes. The relative safety of everyone outside the trashcan thrilled Captain Rescue so much that he felt compelled to join in on the action. He launched himself upwards, sending the lid rocketing into the air. In horror, the hero found himself trapped inside, unable to lift his leg high enough to get out. After thrashing about for a few seconds, the trashcan tipped over and sent him rolling down the street as he smashed his face against the pavement. As the projectile careened towards the horde of zombies, he ducked inside, curled into a ball, and prepared to go bowling. Captain Rescue clenched his teeth and squinted as the trashcan slammed into the zombies. Inside, he saw only legs forcefully removed from their torsos.

He shook off the impact, crawled out, jumped to his feet, and yelled “Stee-rike!”

The zombies did not take the besting of them at anything (even bowling) lightly. Their reduction to that of bowling pins made matters even worse. Soon, they crowded around the hero to even the score bite by bite. As zombie revenge was not his preferred method of demise (he had that planned out: skydiving without a parachute), Captain Rescue screeched and slipped out from the mess of zombies as they grabbed and bit for him.

When presented with a gift as scrumptious Captain Rescue, zombies would be expected to instantly sink their teeth into him. This was simply a misnomer. Whenever a zombie sinks its teeth into anything, that zombie has spent at least a minute in preparation. Their rotten brains really do work at that speed. Since Captain Rescue popped into their world out of nowhere, the zombies were not given the time necessary time to plan an attack, so he slipped away unscathed.

After Captain Rescue put an ample amount of distance between him and the zombies, he grabbed his pistol out from underneath his utility belt and fired gleefully into the cluster of corpses without a care in the world. Normally, Captain Rescue’s patented way of flinging bullets would have certainly been quite hazardous, but since the amount of people still living within the city could be counted on one hand, the chances of a bullet finding anything other than a zombie were infinitesimal.

Everyone started to enjoy themselves as their relative safety set in. Freight, most of all, never grew tired of exploding zombies, and most other things, with his beloved Courtney. At one point, he even stopped shooting. Instead, he used the butt of his shotgun like a hammer and just went to town, whooping and hollering like a redneck at the stock car races. With his help, the zombie slayers littered the street and adjoining parking lot with countless corpses. Silence overtook the area, except for the blanket of corpses that squirted bodily fluids like a series of fountains, and Freight, who refused to settle down.

In celebration of his victory, Captain Rescue kissed the barrel his handgun. Considering it still smoldering hot from pumping out lead, he shortly regretted the decision. After vigorously rubbing his lips with his wrist, he surveyed the battlefield—not a pretty sight. Since zombies were rather putrid and disgusting no matter their condition, that should not have been surprising. Captain Rescue soon realized that the life had not completely drained from the corpses. Some still crawled around on their hands, or hopped around with their tongues, refusing to just give up and die. Zombies clung to their love of human flesh as long as allowed, so the heroes dealt with the remains in the most humane way possible: by vehemently stomping on their heads until they stopped twitching.

With the undead menace nullified, the heroes turned their attention towards The Bank, which seemed to be in roughly the same shape they left it in; give or take a few zombie droppings (all that human flesh had to go somewhere). Around the side, the sole superhero of a doorway still stood forever upright amongst the sea of rubble that surrounded it. After all humanity falls to ruin, this sole door will be one of the few remnants remaining of the once great civilization. How great was certain to be debated by whatever grey-skinned aliens happened to discover it.

“Hoorah!” Captain Rescue yelled as he burst through the front doors of The Bank, waving his gun around, ready to unleash a world of hurt on any zombies lying in wait. Luckily, for the living and the dead, the lobby appeared devoid of any undead. The gun Captain Rescue was holding upside down and backwards would have done him little good. After giving the okay, everyone else spilled into the lobby, but since Captain Rescue’s okay was less than—okay, they were ready for a fight anyway. Despite this, the lobby
did
seem okay.

The heroes needed to discover the origins of the mysterious vial of zombie juice, but they worried the secrets they sought would be buried underneath mountains of encrypted computer data that they would need a super hacker to crack. Thus, with great trepidation, Captain Rescue approached the nearest computer. He picked it up and began talking into it. Shortly thereafter, Dr. Malevolent informed him that a telephone
was not
a computer. A cliché “I knew that” followed, and he placed the telephone down and approached the real computer. After realizing he could bypass the cryptic curtain of pictures that covered the screen by wiggling the mouse, Captain Rescue threw his hands up in anger at the computer’s request for a password.

Down the hall, a zombie found itself drawn to the hubbub. The reanimated corpse bumped into a nearby wall as it and headed in their direction, and no one seemed to notice as it emerged from the darkened hallway. They all found modern technology and its infinite glories too enthralling. The creature wrapped its arms around the nearest lackey, who assumed Dr. Malevolent had finally reciprocated his lifelong crush. He turned around only to find a zombie biting his lips off. His scream spread from person to person as they all erupted at once. Except Stubbs, if he tried to open his mouth to scream, his tongue would fall out and his jaw would likely unhinge.

The other zombie, the dumb one, took another bite of the henchman and then joined in on the screaming. Its tongue soon fell out. After a few seconds spent staring vacantly at the others, the smelly vermin realized this charade could not persist for much longer and began to slink away. Without looking, Freight lifted his shotgun and blew the monster’s head off. Then, he aimed his weapon at the twitching henchman on the floor and blew his head off as well. Then, like the director of the worst high school choir in history, Freight ended their screaming.

Their attention fell back to the computer, which still requested a password. Captain Rescue was hoping that during the screaming it would have realized the severity of the situation and decided to help them anyway. He slammed his fist against the desk, angry that anything (even a computer) would be so selfish at a time like this. The hero then had the most amazing occurrence: an epiphany on display for all to see in the form of a candle hovering a few inches over his head. His higher power had not felt him worthy of a full-fledged light bulb. Then, like a chicken pecking for sweet kernels left on the keyboard, Captain Rescue typed out the number forty-two and hit enter. Amazingly, the computer allowed them access.

“How on
Earth
did you know that was the password,” Dr. Malevolent asked as she slapped him upside the head.

He rubbed the newly formed sore spot. “I heard somewhere that forty-two was the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything.”

She rolled her eyes. “Splendid…”

Thus, they hovered over the computer in search of the data that would bring them back from the brink of destruction. Amongst the cluttered desktop, something would surely lead the way to the people responsible, and a folder entitled “records” caught their eyes. While other directories may have enticed a certain super villain bent on world domination, the zombie slayers focused on the task at hand and clicked the folder. Contained inside, a simple notepad file instructed them to click it. They did as told, and inside a single sentence read, “All records kept on clipboard near computer”. Sure enough, a relatively thick keyboard sat next to the computer.

“Well, someone’s organizational skills were left wanting,” Dr. Malevolent said as she picked up the clipboard and began thumbing through its pages, “this thing is going to take hours to sift through. No wait…”

Captain Rescue grabbed her shoulders and shook her violently. “What is it? The anticipation is killing me!”

“There’s a note up here at the top of the first page, ‘important records kept in the back’.”

She grabbed a hunk of the manuscript and flung it over the top of the clipboard. The primitive device, which had apparently been doing its best not to burst from pressure all these years, finally gave up its fight. The clip holding all the pages snapped in two, and a few hundred leafs of hand written notes spilled onto the floor.

Dr. Malevolent shrugged indifferently. “Good thing nobody needs this junk anymore.” After glancing over the pages for a few seconds, she continued, “Lovely, according to the notes here, there’s an entire section of the vault dedicated to dangerous cargo. Oh and here we are: one of the safety deposit boxes contained ‘a peculiar vial of green liquid’.”